embedded in the floating world
|
nmazca.blog embedded in the floating world |
|
 She was 18 years old. I was a first-term reporter for the Ohio State Lantern at the time. I heard the news about the discovery of a female student's body late that Sunday night. I arrived at the newsroom early the next morning to begin making phone calls. This was not the first time I had to write about a student's death. One month earlier, a male student jumped from the roof of a 13-story dorm (the same one in which I'd lived two years earlier). That news came through late in the day, and we ran a brief. I volunteered to write a longer piece the next morning, but I didn't know where to start. Our advisor told me that I had to call the family, which I did... not having any idea how to begin that conversation... With that experience in mind, but still as uncertain, I dialed the first Hummer I found in the book. Stephanie's mother answered the phone and the conversation probably grinded along -- I can't remember what we said now. I have (half of) the story that ran on March 8th in front of me. The one quote before the jump reads "she loved being (at OSU), she loved being in the Evans Scholars program. She was having so much fun." The next sentence relates that her parents (from the Cincinnati area) saw her last about a week before she was killed. The basic story is this: Stephanie and a few companions were on their way from the off-campus dormitory where she lived, to a friend's home four blocks away. The group tried to climb a wire fence, someone cut a hand, and that person and a friend ran off to the destination. The person with Stephanie decided she didn't want to keep going, but Stephanie did. They separated, Stephanie went to catch up with the first two. This was sometime after 3 a.m. Later that morning, her friends called her dorm and other acquaintances, wanting to know where she was. Stephanie's body was found near a Conrail railroad line north of Mt. Carmel Hospital at 1 p.m. She had been bludgeoned with some sort of heavy object. I went to the site a day or so later and found a depression in the ground, with a circle of leaves encrusted in blood. Stephanie was found only in her underwear; the rest of her clothes, as well as the weapon used to kill her, still have yet to be found. Initial statements from the Columbus Homicide Bureau didn't indicate whether or not she had been raped, but I seem to think that this was confirmed by a local TV station some time later. (Oh lord, deja vu just rushed over me) A number of people have been regarded as suspects -- I remember one investigation from 1995; a man who lived south of Columbus had his home searched, and it came out that police thought he might have had a connection to this case. But nothing turned up. An article from the Cincinnati Enquirer stated that DNA testing ruled out several other suspects in 1998 and 1999. Other than articles about added safety measures around the campus, and the dedication of a park and programs in Stephanie's name, there's little else to mention. Except, for my own part, the rush of emotion when I see Stephanie's photo, or when I recall the gravity -- the dissociation -- of standing where she was killed. I also think about what a reporter who I assigned to do a follow-up that summer told me: One of Stephanie's friends was very displeased with me and the second story I wrote, in which she is heavily quoted. I have that one in front of me, also, and I can't say that I understand why. The article consists of many quotes, generally expressions of disbelief and loss, but certainly nothing libelous, invasive or unduly provocative. I think I just had the tape recorder on and transcribed what was said... I just let her talk. If anything, I would think that people needed to (and probably did) criticize the first story, which ran under the headline: "Screams might have come from abducted OSU student." That embarrasses and bothers me, and not just because of the tabloid tone of the head. It reminds me of how I let myself be swayed by other people and what they thought the angle should have been. The situation was that a woman who lived just off of the alley where Stephanie was last seen called the newsroom, saying she awoke to horrifying screams around 3:45 a.m. on the 6th. The police stated that Stephanie had been abducted between 3:30 and 4:30. This other woman's story -- she'd been interviewed and photographed by another reporter, a guy who had lots of experience with hard news (and harder experiences) -- that became the frame because I relented to his pressure to put it up front. I forget what the rationale was; I just felt put upon and wasn't able to assert myself. And so it reads like a TV news script about screams and this woman's reactions and "what-ifs," but the actual case -- and the person lost -- didn't get mentioned until middle of the second column. Sue Hummer's quotes don't get in until the end of the third, before the jump. It just... it's not what it should have been. "Unseemly" is a good word. And to Dan and Sue, Stephanie's family and friends, I apologize for that (even if no one's asked me to). Ten years on, I want to acknowledge the impact of this young woman's death, even though I never met her. Stephanie Hummer was murdered on 6 March 1994 |
|
|||||||||||||||
